No Lines in the Sand: How to Keep Ourselves Honest in School Politics

Ask yourself this question: Does how I choose to educate my own child combat or exacerbate systemic injustice in the educational system?  

I am not your judge. I live with the same tensions that every other parent-educator lives with. This question is uncomfortable and has nagged me at my core for the 13 years I’ve worked in schools; I’ve only recently been able to clearly define and articulate this dilemma.

Our jockeying for educational advantages for our own children can be both righteous and reckless, creating a complicated, entangled web of conflicts of interest and strange bedfellows.

Picking a side–teachers union or education reform, Republican or Democratic, charter or district–is the worst thing an independent thinker like me can do. Complex educational problems are never solved by drawing superficial, dishonest lines in the sand, so I refuse to do it.

As a teacher, my goal is to err on the side of children, which is impossible to do if I have already pledged allegiance to the adults.